The present invention relates to kitchen utensils, and specifically to tools for puncturing a lid of a vacuum sealed bottle to release the vacuum seal to allow easy removal of the lid.
To avoid contamination and prevent tampering, many food and beverage, and medicine bottles available in the marketplace are equipped with vacuumed sealed lids, wherein the food or liquid is placed in the bottle while hot and allowed to cool after the lid is screwed or pressed onto the bottle to securely seal the bottle. The resultant vacuum forces are often quite large and require a disengagement force that is difficult to generate by normal human hand and wrist action. Even a hardy person must sometimes resort to extraordinary effort to remove the lid. The difficulty is exacerbated for the elderly and/or physically challenged.
A number of tools have been offered or suggested to aid in removing such lids, to remove other strongly secured lids, such as paint can lids, or to otherwise open sealed bottles. Lid wrenches and other tools to provide mechanical leverage to help turn a lid against the force of a vacuum seal are illustrated by U.S. Pat. No. 3,724,296 (Graver), U.S. Pat. No. 5,083,482 (Floyd), U.S. Pat. No. 6,105,468 (Fohrman et al.), D440,842 (Vandergaw), and U.S. Pat. No. 6,490,951 (Davidson). Such tools, while providing leverage still require substantial strength to use and are large and relatively expensive. Tools that have been designed for prying open paint cans and the like, and to also punch a hole in the paint can gutter to enable paint to drain back into the can, are illustrated by U.S. Pat. No. 4,580,302 (Barth), U.S. Pat. No. 5,127,121 (Bossie), U.S. Pat. No. 5,568,665 (Fick), and U.S. Pat. No. 6,360,444 (Fluhr et al.). Such tools take advantage of a space between the edge of the paint can and the lid, where a gutter is formed, and are not useful for removing vacuum sealed lids, which generally do not have such a pry edge. Tools that have been designed to puncture can tops or to facilitate or replace the use of built-in tab openers are illustrated by U.S. Pat. No. 4,357,753 (Wilkinson), U.S. Pat. No. 4,136,448 (Fournier et al.), U.S. Pat. No. 4,549,451 (Widman), U.S. Pat. No. 5,203,087 (Richard), and U.S. Pat. No. 5,644,848 (Totten). Such tools are large and relatively expensive, are not readily applied to vacuum sealed jar lids or the like. Moreover, the holes punched into the can tops are generally too large to be easily resealed if that is desired by the consumer. U.S. Pat. No. 5,150,802 (Jeffers) describes a puncture and seal apparatus that can be secured to a bottle, which straddles the bottle, a presser plate pushing the bottom of the can onto a piercing cone which creates a pierced opening and then seals the opening for subsequent use as a spout that can be opened and closed. Aside from its relatively high cost and great size, the tool is not useful to open vacuum sealed lids on jars and the like. Finally, of superficial relevance to the structure of the present invention, is a golf tee awl for making holes in the ground, to make it easier to insert golf tees, is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,090,298 (Rushforth). There is no suggestion that such a tool could be used to release the vacuum of sealed jar lids and the like, nor could the elongate spike of that tool be easily used for that purpose.